To wonder what it's like to earn £200k per year?!

[ABCD1000]

Friend's husband earns just over £200k per year, with an annual £150k bonus for the last few years! No jealousy (much!) just wonder what life would be like?!

TBH I think those posters saying it's stressful earning that amount have never had the true stress of not being able to afford food / rent / heating.

On that kind of income you don’t have to worry about money, but you still have plenty of other things to worry about! With that kind of salary comes a stressful job, huge responsibilities and pressure to keep performing better and better at work.

We live well within our means and also save well but I have a constant fear of it not lasting, losing our jobs and not being able to keep up the mortgage, stuff like that.

Chesty you are right of course.* It’s possible for both situations to cause stress though.* Just because you are not stressed about buying food, doesn’t mean you don’t have other stresses that you feel acutely

Not sure where the second lot of bolting came from

I have a constant fear of it not lasting, losing our jobs and not being able to keep up the mortgage, stuff like that
Our income is a tenth of the one in the OP and we have those exact same fears.

What I mean to say is.

Just because you earn that salary doesn't mean you will never be stressed. But you'll never be stressed because of the amount you earn. Like you might be on nmw.

My DB works in banking - I don’t know how much he earns but over 6 figures certainly. His partner is freelance in her field but in a good year she pulls in similar. But once you have two kids in private school at £20k each, a nice-ish house in London and not a lot of free time on your hands (hence cleaner, ironing lady, gardener, handyman etc), the costs do mount up. They don’t have a flash car or luxury holidays but they do appear to waste a huge amount of money as far as I see.... buying expensive preprepared food that they don’t have time to eat, tickets for events that they can’t go to, that kind of thing. They throw money away in a way I just couldn’t.
But what they do have (as long as their jobs continue to exist!) is financial security, not having to worry about big unexpected bills, and saving for retirement / the future - neither of which I can do.

My job is incredibly stressful yes, but I do choose to go to it. If I wanted to I could take a massive pay cut and work elsewhere. People can choose to downsize their house, sell a car, go on less holidays, put their kids in state school. Someone with little training on zero hours contract on nmw doesn't have that choice. Money affords you choices.

The CEO of the charity I work for earns that. And doesn't really earn it as in with hard work. Trots out platitudes at conferences and repeats sound bites for the industry press occasionally.

DH earns that, some years more.

He is worth every penny, he is directly responsible for winning the business that keeps hundreds of people in work and he’s been doing it for those people for years.

I don’t buy the ‘people aren’t worth X amount.’ If they’re doing a job with very niche skills that enriches other peoples lives then they are.

We live comfortably and we have money for a rainy day. However I think the difference is that DS is incredibly lucky. Sometimes I stop and think about it and it takes my breath away. Not fancy toys particularly, but private education, travel, the resources to explore his interests, a deposit for his first house. My family was comfortable when I was a child but we were never more than three months from it all going wrong. Eventually it did. That won’t happen to DS.

It involves a job which carries huge responsibility and long hours and sacrifice in my case and my dp's too. But it is nice to not only have a good standard of living but not to have day to day worries of how things are paid for.
I love the security of knowing that most day to day events.. Such as the washing machine breaking will not cause any stress.. We can just order a new one.
And I love being able to treat my family, especially my parents who worked and scrimped to give me an education which has enabled me to be were I am.
And best of all I love my job.
But one thing I will say is 'bonuses' are rarely just hard cash. My dp is in an industry that gives bonuses.. His this year was £180k. In hard cash in his bank account he got £30k.
Firstly it's taxed, then he is forced to accept 65%as shares and he cannot cash them in for 5yrs and then what's left he gets.
I am not complaining... I think bonus culture is awful, especially in the city we're so many employees have an entitled attitude to them. I argue with my dp about it all the time... Imo a bonus is what you get for exceptional performance above and beyond and no one should see it as their right to get one.

Agree thefirstmrsDV

I have far more respect for @chesty than those others to whom £100k+ is not much or those who work so hard.

Many minimum wage workers work so, so hard

Woth bonus ours has exceeded this for the last few years, it doesn't buy a celebrity lifestyle at all but what it does buy is freedom. One of our children was struggling in state school so we moved to private without much thought, we don't save for holidays and go away 2-3 times a year. We eat out when we fancy, have babysitters most weeks and we don't have to say no to the children based on cost although we often say no for other reasons. We've a nice house but it's far from a mansion with a big mortgage and we did have lots of savings until we spent most of them on our house but did it on the knowledge that we'd be able to build them up again.

We don't buy designer clothes, we still shop in Tesco / Lidl and keep an eye on our bills but don't stress if something unexpected turns up.

I can't say that DH (my salary is much lower) is worth more than other peoples or that he works harder but he's tuned into work 24 /7 and will be doing work related stuff most weekends or evenings. Luckily he can now manage his hours a bit but for many years he was doing a good 8am - 10pm at least 5 nights a week

As theredjellybean says long hours, lots of responsibility and in our household ridiculous amounts of international travel 6 continents in the last 8 weeks. My DP has had only two full weekends off this year, he has one weekend where he finished work 3am Saturday and three where he didn’t work one day. Several of the others he has pulled 48 hours straight napping on his sofa.
Last December he got to work at 6.30am one Friday and didn’t finish till 8.30pm the next Thursday again napping on his sofa and buying clean pants in the local Asda.
Only two weeks till he retires.

My OH and I earn bit more than that between us and as someone up thread mentioned, it just comes with a different set of pressures and priorities. Not least because we give half of it away to the tax man.
We still feel broke most of the time (I know it's all relative), once the huge mortgage, the two cars, the childcare, the bills etc, the expensive holidays etc are paid for. And the threat of redundancy is never far from the fore. In fact I constantly worry about money. In London £200k among most of the people I know is probably just about average.
That said, I can't imagine what it's like to be in debt, (apart from a mortgage) or not buy what I want when I want it and don't think twice about a £300 haircut or a £200 dinner.
So yes, I guess you're pretty well off at £200k but don't assume that that you'd never feel poor again. You would most likely just adjust your standard of living and spend more.

I caveat the above by saying that I sometimes read about people on here who literally have £20 in their purse to last till payday, and I realise that my "money worries" are not really money worries in relation to most of the country.

I prefer to have a job that does not cripple me with responsibilities.
I leave at the end of the day and never have to work late. I can work part time and still live comfortably. I like having lots of family time and 'me' time even if it means I don't have a fancy car or designer clothes. I'm sure it would be lovely to be that rich in many ways but the pay off is just not worth it for me. I feel lucky to not really worry about money but I am careful to live within my means and don't really feel like I do without.

DH earns more than that. As posters upthread we don't have a flashy lifestyle, kids at state schools, one v old car but what it does mean is that we can buy what we want within reason without worrying about it and having to save up. If the washing machine breaks, we can get a new one. If we want to go on holiday we can. Kids need shoes, we can buy them etc.
DH's work is not particularly stressful although is self employed which brings a certain kind of stress. Not horrendous hours usually and v little travel. We both put the hours in in our 20s and 30s though.
We live in London so don't have a massive house, no garden etc but we have a nice lifestyle and I realise we are very lucky.

@AhhhhThatsBass, you saying you 'feel poor' is like someone saying they 'feel like a single parent' because their husband has nipped to Asda.

I don’t understand why anyone on that kind of money is driving around in 6 year old cars or doesn’t have a big tv etc.

Is that really the way you chose to live on that salary?

Dh used to sell £300k cars to customers: barings bank staff, because they’d got yet another £200k bonus and already had a place in the USA, and a ski lodge in Val-dIsere.
They had nothing else to spend their money on.

So why are you choosing to live do modestly on £9k+ per month.
I don’t really understand. I’m not suggesting you become brash and brazen, but some of the posts don’t make sense.
Why would you live in a small flat, as one poster posted, on that income?

Id pay out 2.5k of that each month to have someone feed me healthy homecooked food 5 days a week and keep my little flat.

I hate thinking up meals and can never ever be organised enough for healthy planning.

As a pp mentioned, while a huge amount, bonus are not all paid in case, say 50£ in cash, taxed about half. Then say 75£ paid in shares over 5 years. You'll never own all of them - the golden handcuff.

Not denying it's a huge amount, but just illustrating for perspective.

My DH earns a significant amount. However money doesn't buy everything.

It won't make DSC 'D'M want to contact them or take away the hurtful things she has said.

It won't change my health and allow me to live long enough to see my DC grow up.

"The money is not worth it. I much prefer life without a 4 hour a day commute, 10 hours in the office "

The usual shift in residential care is 12 hours and if any of the Staff call in sick, then you often do 14 hours, often on MW. Likewise in MH Care, which is really stressful.

If anyone doubts that there isn't massive differences in high earners and the rest of us, watch "Rich house, poor house". I can remember the one were the 'poor Dad' was in tears because he could finally afford a pair of football boots for his son.

The 'rich Dad' was shocked that to get an old couch removed was half of their wages after housing costs. There were so many issues that they had never had to consider before. Many of the rich families admit that they couldn't live like that permanently.

I’m a CEO of a small charity, work long hours, eves & weekends, am never “off duty”, keep many people in work, deal with public presentations and business stresses but as it is (and always will be) a low-income charity, I earn £28k. Some posters would do well to realise that hard work does not always equal six-figure salaries. Some obviously do realise that.

My salary + DH’s (a little more than mine) mean that we’ve been able to buy a shared ownership property and we don’t have to choose heat/food for which I am grateful.